Shonenji Temple Gate

A Small Gate, Built Entirely of Zelkova

Shonenji Temple Gate (稱念寺山門, also written Shōnen-ji Sanmon) is a four-legged gate on the western side of the precinct of a Seizan Jodo sect temple at 1346 Kada, Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture, built in the closing decades of the Edo period between 1830 and 1868 and listed as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 28 June 2017.

Its frontage measures 2.9 metres. That is the width of a modest garage door, and it is the first thing to understand about this building, because everything the Agency for Cultural Affairs says about it turns on the gap between that measurement and the quality of what was made within it. The record ends with a plain judgement: small in scale, yet built throughout in zelkova, and a gate of high quality.

Zelkova, keyaki in Japanese, is the hardwood Japanese carpenters reach for when a member must be both strong and beautiful. It is heavy, it is slow to season, its interlocked grain fights the plane, and a large clear piece has always been expensive. Framing an entire gate in it, rather than using it only where the grain would show, is a decision about money and intent as much as about carpentry.

How to Read a Four-Legged Gate

The name shikyakumon translates as four-legged gate, and the count confuses almost everyone at first. Two main posts stand under the ridge and carry the doors. Behind and in front of them stand four subsidiary posts, two on each side, which brace the frame and support the eaves. Six posts in all; the four braces give the type its name. It is a formal configuration, used conventionally for the principal gates of temples and for gates of high rank, and the oldest surviving examples in Japan date to the turn of the thirteenth century.

At Shonenji the main posts are round in section. The subsidiary posts are square with a kicho chamfer, a profile in which the corner is cut back and finished with a small bead, named after the freestanding curtain frames of Heian-period interiors whose uprights were worked the same way. The two post types are tied together by three horizontal members at different heights: a penetrating tie at waist level, a nailed rail immediately above it, and a head tie at the top. Each does a different job. The penetrating tie passes through the posts and resists racking; the nailed rail is fixed to the face and stiffens the assembly; the head tie gathers the tops together before the roof load arrives.

Above the main posts runs the kabuki, the lintel spanning the opening. Sitting on it, in the position an intercolumnar strut would occupy, is a kaerumata, a frog-leg strut, and it in turn carries a koryo, a rainbow beam curved gently along its upper edge. That short vertical stack, lintel to strut to curved beam, is the compositional heart of the gate. Everything above it is roof.

The roof itself is gabled and laid with formal round-and-flat tiles. Small subsidiary roofs cover the wicket doors set into each flank, the low side openings used for daily comings and goings when the main leaves stay shut.

What the Registration Recognised

Registered Tangible Cultural Property is the lighter of Japan's two systems for protecting historic buildings. Where designation as an Important Cultural Property brings strict controls and national repair funding, registration works by notification: the owner reports exterior alterations, receives tax relief and technical advice, and carries on using the structure. The system, introduced in 1996, was designed to catch the vast stock of buildings around fifty years old and upward that fall outside the designation net.

The gate holds registration number 30-0225, granted in the 87th round of listings, under the criterion that it sets a standard of design. Its official category is not building but other structure, the classification used for gates, walls, bridges and similar works.

The pairing with the temple's main hall, listed the same day as 30-0224, is worth pausing over. The hall was built in 1795 in the castle town of Wakayama and moved to Kada in 1907. The gate carries no relocation note in the Agency's record, which is normally where such a fact would appear. On the documentary evidence, then, the gate is the older presence on this ground and the hall is the arrival, and the two now read as a set only because a Meiji-period transfer put them together.

Three buildings of the Miyazaki family residence in Kada were registered on the same June day. The prefectural register shows Kada accumulating listings steadily since 2005: the former police station of the Taisho era, the Tomogashima lighthouse of 1872, the Mukai family house of 1860, and the surviving structures of the old Kada gun battery.

Standing in Front of It

The gate faces west, which in Kada means it faces the water. Late in the day the light comes straight down the lane and rakes across the timber, and that is when the zelkova is worth looking at closely: the grain reads as a shallow relief, and the chamfers on the subsidiary posts catch a line of highlight the round posts cannot. Morning is flatter and better for reading the joinery, since the shadows under the eaves are less absolute.

Look at the underside of the eaves before you walk through. Then look at the strut above the lintel. On a gate this narrow the carver had very little surface to work with, and the way the frog-leg outline is proportioned to the opening below it is the sort of judgement that separates a competent gate from a good one.

Kada is the terminus of the Nankai Kada Line from Wakayama City Station, nicknamed the Kada fish line, and some services run the decorated Medetai Densha tourist trains introduced in 2016. The walk from Kada Station into the old town takes roughly ten minutes. The lanes are narrow and lined with houses, so leave the car near the station.

Shonenji is a working parish temple rather than a visitor attraction, and it publishes neither visiting hours nor an admission charge. The gate stands on the precinct boundary and can be seen and photographed from the public lane without entering; going further, or visiting when a service is in progress, should be arranged with the temple first. Kada Kasuga Shrine, whose main sanctuary of 1596 is an Important Cultural Property, is effectively next door at 1343 Kada.